There are multiple senses of the word "declarative". I'd say the terminology came from trying to figure out the difference between describing a problem (declarative) and telling the computer exactly how to solve it (imperative).

You might want to take a look at how Haskell and Prolog approach the n-queens problem. The haskell solutions I've seen, with prolog as foil, now take a positively imperative hue!

-- Kim-Ee


On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Christopher Howard <christopher.howard@frigidcode.com> wrote:
Hi. I still have a lot to learn in Haskell (who doesn't?) but I was
thinking about learning Prolog on the side. I was wondering what you
thought about the language. I was interested in it primarily because I
understood it was a purely declarative language and that everything is
defined in the programs as relations. However, at the Wikipedia page it
states that Prolog is not actually purely declarative, referencing an
article which points out that it is necessary to think about Prolog
programs procedurally because of the way that Prolog resolves queries.
Is this not as big a deal as it sounds like? Or is there some other
similar language I should learn instead? (One of the "successors" of
Prolog?)

I'm fairly open minded, so long as all the tools are FOSS. Though of
course, a language with better community support, documentation, etc. is
preferable.

--
frigidcode.com
indicium.us


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